Question: How do you think the MOOC will evolve over the
next two years

Maria: it’s a bit hard to say, we’re in an experimental
phase, we’re mostly looking at uses at the graduate level where people already
have experiences

Relly: I like Maria’s answer. It’s early days. First, we can
look for innovations in pedagogy, because of the work with such diverse
participants. How does participation in discussion forums influence learning?
How does putting themselves into the place of the instructor influence
learning? And even cultural aspects, eg., the notion of ‘what is a class?’ –
many of these MOOCs have become learning communities. I think we’ll see
innovations in the technology, eg., more social tools. There will be many more
classes.

Rebecca: We all say it’s early days. But it’s true. This
time last year EdX wasn’t even an entity. But what’s really evolving is a
broader conversation about online learning. Those of us who have worked in online
learning for many years know it occupies a specific space, and note that what
it’s doing is pushing the conversation about teaching and learning. The
conversation now is wide open.

Barbara. I would agree with my co-panelists, we are in the
early days. I hope we see an increase in the number of campuses figuring out
their MOOC strategies, and that we’ll see engagement – maybe a movement from X
to C, toward communities.

Question: How do you see the MOOC transforming learning in
online and other delivery modes?

Relly: Trying to engage students in lots of active ways. We’re
seeing in MOOCs not a lot more attention paid to pedagogy and teaching in STEM
classes, bringing the benefits of online learning back to the the university
and live classes.

Rebecca: the MOOC is pushing the conversation about pedagogy
and learning. One of the experiments in EdX, taking the MOOC and offering it on
campus. What we’re hearing in focus groups is the community, the interaction.
We have conversations with faculty really not thinking about this. Now faculty
are thinking about how we teach well for MOOCs and the very diverse audience,
and bringing it back to their classrooms. There is a lot of energy thinking
about he methods that are working online.

Barbara: it reminds me of the need for a flux capacitor in
some of our MOOCs. ;) It brings us back to the discussion of how online
learning began in the first place. It’s the same conversation. MOOCs are
becoming a test-drive and an onramp to degree completion. Not only will we see
an improvement in teaching and learning, but also a reduction in cost.

Maria: maybe one insight: now I think of SPOCs, small
private online courses, how they made professors rethink things. Now MOOCs are focusing
institutional questions.

Question: How do you see intellectual property and ownership
issues evolving considering that some institutions are using each other's
course content via MOOC providers—an uncommon practice in higher education.

Rebecca: from the EdX space, people have been remarkably
open and flexible. Faculty are generating their own courses, but we have San
Jose State using our course, etc. Our faculty are habving the opportunity to
see how their material is being used and how it appears to different kinds of
students. There are different cultures – MIT has a very open culture, but as we
work across partnerships, there are different cultures, different levels of
openness.

Barbara: many of the IP discussions are going to be the
decision of the institution. We will br promoting OER and CC, these will be
campus decisions. But where it gets interesting is when we get more and more
student generated content.

Maria: how does the 2002 TEACH act apply to MOOCs? Doe sit
still apply? And also, who owns student generated content? How can it be used –
can it be used for research?

Relly: Things are still evolving. At Coursera IP does not
belong with us; we provide the platform and our partners provide the content.

Question: In your courses, how can you ensure that a
students' work is their own? Is there a way to structure courses to address
this concern?

Barbara: every type of course is going to have the
vulnerability of not knowing work is performed by that students or learner, but
just as in online learning there’s a way to solicit information to essentially
create a profile of the student. But when we don’t have this data it’s more
difficult. We want to make the academic rules made clear before and up front in
the course, this is especially important for student generate content.

Maria: this becomes an issue only when we are giving credit.
When they’re just vehicles for learning, as most of them are not, it’s not that
big a deal. We hope it will mostly be like that. It’s a delight now, we don’t
have any ‘hostages’ to the course.

Relly: it really becomes an issue when people start to use
their MOOCs in context with other things. We started a pilot called ‘signature
track’, where we give a certificate where they verify their identity as they go
through the course; they have their webcam photo and keystrokes identified. They
get a certificate and a URL they can share.

Rebecca: we’re experimenting with similar things, in one
project we have a partnership with Pearson for proctored exams. But it goes
back to the motivations why students are taking these courses – we have people
who are learners, not students.

Question: Matriculated students enjoy full support from
their institution's library; how can the MOOC provide similar support to the
many thousands of students enrolled in the MOOC, the majority of which are not
enrolled at the institution that is offering the course.

Maria: You must have been monitoring my Twitter stream. I’ve
been really frustrated, I have no access to institutional libraries any more.
There’s a real irony to an institutional system that teaches students to access
the library and then kicks them out with no more access to it. There’s a role
for these libraries. But I don’t see a way for them to do it for free.

Relly: in an idea world we make everything open source. We’ve
seen a few classes that try to work with publishers, to provide part of a
resource for free, and an opportunity to buy the full item.

Matriculated students enjoy full support from their
institution's library; how can the MOOC provide similar support to the many
thousands of students enrolled in the MOOC, the majority of which are not
enrolled at the institution that is offering the course.

Relly: like Coursera, we have arrangements with folks, and
we try to find out what we can offer for free access. Within our consortia, we
work with librarians to see what can be offered across the consortium.

(UCF Viewing Room (MOOCer Wannabes): Many of our MOOC
students are outside the US and have trouble ordering our textbooks.)

Barbara: I’m spoiled rotten – not having access to libraries
and librarians is like not having access to the internet. Perhaps this is a
point where we can get libraries involved with the MOOCs and get our digital literates really rockin’.

Question: Do you think the learning that takes place in a
MOOC is on par with a face-to-face based course?

Relly: I think this is an apples and oranges comparison. We
have to ask, why is the student taking the course. Online learning and live
learning have their strengths. Online learning si good for mastery learning,
helps people with say autism. And live learning has strengths as well.

Rebecca: this is a question that’s always asked of online
learning. I’m waiting for the day we ask whether face-to-face learning is as
good as the MOOC. Keep an open mind of just how learning takes places across a
variety of settings.

Barbara: I’ve been engaged in creating five different MOOCs,
and it has been such a delight to watch faculty pouring their heart into
designing them. But I have in mind a phrase I heard: “The world gets online
learning.”

Maria: these are apples and oranges. In a MOOC, it’s for the
world, for people who are learning for learning’s sake. In an institutional course,
even online courses, it’s for a certificate. It’s like comparing a book club to
a literature course.

Question: Some critics suggest that the MOOC is a
"retreat" to the old transmission course model.How do your course designs address this
possible criticism?

Rebecca: one of our signature pieces is learning sequences,
very short sessions interspersed with problem sets, virtual labs, to get
students immediate feedback. We’ve learned from research that students are
looking for just-in-time feedback. So we’ve been doing things like green checkmarks,
etc. Our students are looking for a high level of interactivity. So are our
faculty. They aren’t looking to be just transmitters of information. So we’re
looking at how to engage folks beyond just watching the lecture. I hate it when
we all get categorized into just one course type.

Barbara: In some cases they probably are, but hopefully they
won’t be. The question is how we can incorporate learner choice. The
opportunity to offer a variety of different pathways for learners. The use of
social media is so exciting, it will give us the ability to use social
constructivism.

Maria: the key here lies not in the word MOOC but in how the
learning design is done. It revolves around how we look at the old transmission
model. Traditional learning was done by showing, the lecture model really is
recent.

Relly: I think of the old traqnsmission model with the big
lecture hall and the professor speaking and the students passively taking
notes. The MOOCs are more interactive, with short videos, with activities and
quizzes, lots of interactions on the discussion forums, outside in real life
meeting with study groups.

Question: Some providers feel that peer review of student
work is a sufficient replacement for feedback from an expert like a faculty
member or a TA.Would you agree?

Barbara: we know from publishing from our faculty how
important peer review is for tenure track. But in the MOOC here really volume
is in our favour. It goes beyond whether we can just get expert feedback. It’s
about getting diverse voices.

Maria: I think that peer review demands that students really
be familiar with certain topics. Eg. A grasp of grammar. Perhaps a cohort of
experts, of people who have already shown they know the material. Universities
did this with TAs. But TAs get paid. But we need to ask: are we doing peer
review so students can learn, or for formal assessment. The prior is OK, the
latter is questionable.

Relly. The short answer is yes. The first response is, how can
you grade when there’s 10s of thousands of students? It gives them the
opportunity not only to write an assignment but also read an assignment
contributed by another student. We found that most instructors hadn’t done peer
assessment before, they needed to be more attentive to things like writing a
rubric. People are starting to look at this. But the answer is yes, peer review
in MOOCs is working quite well.

Rebecca: one of the tricky things is the context, what
purpose is it serving? It can be very misused and very confusing to the
student. It becomes about helping the students understand what it is to do peer
review. This is especially important in a cross-cultural setting. A careful
framework must be developed. We’re doing some really quiet pilots to figure out
how to balance the efficiency and the pedagogy behind that.

Question: Do you think that the current learning technology
tools are sufficient to support MOOCs?

Maria: I don’t think learning technologies will ever be
finished, so how can you ever say they are sufficient

(Stephen Downes: "Space technology will never be
finished, so how can you ever say a certain space technology will be sufficient
to get to the moon?")

Relly: I would say yes. I often bring up the example of the
lecture videos, where there is a knee-jerk reaction that we want lecture videos
that are really professional. But students want them to seem more real, to see
the professor’s office, etc.

Rebecca: this is a tricky question where the technology isn’t
the driver of the pedagogy and the learning design, we want it to be reversed.
Obviously it has been sufficient to start the MOOC movement. But it's ’bout making
sure the innovations are being driven by the teaching and learning
conversations.

Barbara: clearly the tools can get better, and they will,
but I think of my experience with Gardner Campbell’s MOOSE, about doing things
I didn’t think could be done with a community. It’s really starting a professional
revolution. Looking for crowd-sharing around design of the tools.

Question: Do you have any inkling of a funding model for
MOOCs? Does anybody?

Relly: what’s happening at Coursera, we are experimenting
with a couple different ways of bringing in revenue. It can’t be for charging
to take the class. One way is the certification, charging $50-$60 to verify
their identity. We’re also starting with career services, putting companies
together with students.

Rebecca: we’re experimenting with a lot of different models.
Our effort is mostly toward rounding out our first courses. We’re trying to be
sustainable, but also being clear about what it is we’re trying to sustain; our
courses and materials will always be open to people. One thing –w e won’t call
it licensing, but reuse – is one of the options we’ve been exploring.

(Kathy Fernandes @ Calif. State University: MOOCs don't bear
the weight of supporting career centers, counseling centers, health/rec
centers, writing center, and other cost centers. So are we going back to a
model that financially is ONLY about the cost of the actual teaching and
learning?)

Barbara: AP has a business model in that we’re working with
institutions that have an online program. Hopefully as we attaract students
into these programs we share in the revenue. But also we hope we are helping
institutions fulfill their social contract with the communities.

Maria: enough money needs to be made to support all these
platforms, so there will be experiments. Hopefully the cost of tuition will be
controlled or even lowered, and the quality of education even rise as a result.